The Black Madonna Read Online Free

two fingers hard into his eyes. Nicky sat up and yelled at his mother. Donna Rubina slapped his face. “No wonder,” she said. “An ungrateful son . . .”
    Teresa moved close to Donna Rubina. “He’s sorry,” she said, and poked Nicky hard in his ribs with her finger. “Forgive him.” She put four tightly rolled bills into Donna Rubina’s hand. Donna Rubina took them without looking down and dropped them into her front pocket. She had explained to Teresa that the money must be rolled up tight, as slim as cigarettes, disguised to fool the spirits.
    Teresa bent to kiss the old woman’s hand. “
Mille grazie,
Donna Rubina,” she said, and she stood back up and put a hand on Nicky’s shoulder. Nicky felt his mother’s nails dig into his skin.
    â€œThanks,” Nicky said. He blew out his anger in a sigh. His mother led Donna Rubina to the door and he heard them whispering.
    When Donna Rubina was gone, when the hallway door downstairs had slammed behind her, Teresa came back and sat beside him on the bed. She smoothed back his hair. She ran a hand down his arm and over his legs. He looked away from her. “When you walk, you’ll thank me,” she told him.
    â€œYeah,” he said, “except I’ll be blind.”
    Nicky’s mother waited for her miracle. She lit candles and stood Nicky up from the chair in the kitchen. She did this only at night, making sure the window shades were pulled down, the chain secure in its slot across the door. She closed her door after all the other doors on the landing had closed. She listened for the doors in the rest of the building to close. When she came down the narrow hallway of her apartment to unhook the string that looped around the doorknob and held her door open, she was the last one.
    After the house was secure, after the door was shut, she would help Nicky up from the chair and stand in front of him. She would coax him forward.
“Cammina, cammina,”
she would say in a soft voice. She would close her eyes halfway and mutter a prayer and Nicky would hold out his arms to her and try to move his legs. She would step back, calling to him, whispering his name, and then he would fall.
    Once he knocked her down and fell on top of her. The two of them lay there, Nicky tangled in her skirts. She smacked him that time and said he wasn’t trying, but then she enclosed his head in her arms, his chin caught in the bend of her elbow, and pressed him against her. She held him this way and petted him until he complained that he couldn’t breathe.
    Nicky was bored with the rituals and the amulets and the smell of the olive oil that she worked into his legs. After Donna Rubina had stuck her fingers in his eyes, he wouldn’t let his mother bring her to the house. Donna Rubina told her there was little she could do from a distance, that the demons were very clever, convincing Nicky to refuse her help. Donna Rubina smelled failure and took care for her reputation. She promised Teresa she would hold Nicky in her special prayers. “He’s a very young boy,” she told her. “Miracles take time.” Donna Rubina scratched her chin with the thumb of her right hand. “There is something . . .” she said to Teresa, who had come to see her with gifts of pignoli cookies and figs soaked in brandy.
    Teresa stood very still. She put her palms together, fingers laced in supplication. Donna Rubina hesitated. She curled her bottom lip under her front teeth. “. . . something I can give you,” she said, and she pulled a small leather case from her pocketbook. Inside, next to a scapular of green felt, was a holy card with an image of the Madonna, a gold Madonna with a black face. She held a black-faced infant and they wore gold crowns and garlands of flowers.
Patrona e Regina della Lucania
was printed along the bottom of the card. The sky behind the Madonna was blue.
    â€œFrom our